A guide to integrating spirituality and entrepreneurship

I’ve been trying for a while to nail down what it is that Conscious Startups wants to be about.

Last night, I had a realization.

There’s a lot of people who are attracted to spirituality, who are already on a spiritual path, and who follow many different spiritual teachers - Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, Steve Jobs, Neale Donald Walsch, Cheri Huber, you name it. People who are already doing it, as well as those who are watching from the sidelines, wondering when to stick their toes in.

There’s also a lot of people who are already into entrepreneurship, into creating products and businesses that are works of art. People who are already doing it, as well as those who are watching from the sidelines, wondering when to get their feet wet.

What I want to do is to provide guidance to others who, like me, are already interested in both entrepreneurship and spirituality, and who want to figure out ways to integrate their spirituality into their entrepreneurship more.

Like: How can our spirituality inform how we conceive of products? How does it impact what the business does and how we set a vision and a direction for the company? How does it impact our relationship, with employees, with investors, with customers, with the greater world around us?

How does our spiritual practice and our role as a leaders inform each other together? How does the spirituality of the individual relate to the spirituality of the team or the whole organization?

What has tripped me up in the past has been a form of spiritual materialism: Seeing spirituality as a strategy to becoming a more successful entrepreneur. That’s simply ego co-opting the spiritual process.

While that may be a benefit, it also may not, and it can never be a strategy. What helped me see this, was discovering the book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which I found on the list of Steve Jobs favorite books yesterday. Thanks, Steve!